Update Metadata externally without losing edits

Question

I am a sports photographer and use Photo Mechanic (PM) to ingest and select photos. Edits are done in LRCC. I file photos during games (intermissions) and then after games (final set). For in-game photos, I don't have to identify the athletes or add captions. For the final set, I need to identify the athletes and sometimes write captions.

What I do now is go back to PM to add "Persons Present" and write captions. (LRCC simply cannot compete with the ease with which this is done in PM.) To update the metadata in LR, the only way I know of is to "Read Metadata from File" but this causes all the edits to be lost. I need LR to have the current metadata so that it is in the files that are exported.

Is there some way to get LR to simply update the metadata from the file without losing all my edits?

Thanks for any advice you can offer.

dj_paige · Accepted Answer

I don't use Photo Mechanic, but this does work with Geosetter. When I do my edits in LrC, I have LrC write the metadata (edits) to the files automatically. Catalog Settings->Metadata->Automatically write changes to XMP.

Then my external program (Geosetter) will write the geotag information to XMP, appending it to the metadata already written by LrC. So when it comes time for Lightroom Classic to read in the information from the external program, all the edits plus the metadata from the other program are now read in properly, and so all my edits and all my external metadata are now in LrC.

So you need to experiment to see if this will work with Photo Mechanic, and is there an option in PM to append the metadata to the existing edits.

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